Social buying comes of age as Groupon raises $135M from Russia's DST
Groupon, the Chicago startup that offers group discounts, raised $135 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies in a deal signifying that social buying has rapidly matured into a real business.
Part of the investment will go toward cashing out early-stage investors, on top of expanding the company. The round also drew in Battery Ventures.
The new funding marks the company’s explosive rise out of obscurity; Groupon is actually an outgrowth of a three-year … Continue Reading
What’s wrong with an LLC?
(Editor’s note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.)
A reader writes: I set up an LLC on LegalZoom about a year ago and now my new lawyer is telling me I have to change it to a corporation if I want to get VC funding. My accountant, though, told me an … Continue Reading
Another bubble? Eye-popping valuations raise eyebrows
(Editor’s note: Peter Bodine is managing director of Allegis Capital. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.)
Venture capital funding is starting to rebound, but it’s doing so in a trajectory that very few pundits would have predicted. A few highly visible startups, despite minimal market traction, are having no trouble attracting substantial capital at extremely generous valuations. But the vast majority can’t get to first base.
You might call this the pendulum effect on startup … Continue Reading
Synaptics lets Linux gadgets give the iPad 10 fingers
Apple’s multitouch finger controls on the iPad have inspired a wave of copycat tablet computers that will be out later this year. Those copycats are likely to get help from touch-sensor company Synaptics, which is announcing today that it has created a Linux version of its multitouch sensor system.
The Synaptics Gesture Suite enables computer screens to recognize touches from up to 10 fingers at the same time. In the past, two-finger gestures, like pinching … Continue Reading
Why Google can't out-open Facebook with XAuth
Peter Yared is founder and CEO of social app development company Transpond.
XAuth, Google’s attempt to head off Facebook’s domination of online content sharing, is fraught with problems. It appears to be built with good intentions, allowing smaller social services to persist in a Facebook- and Twitter-dominated world. But unlike OAuth, the standard many of those services use today to link publishers’ websites to their services and which allows any website to work directly with … Continue Reading
BlackArrow scores $20M for new TV ads, partners with on-demand TV company NDS
BlackArrow — a provider of advertising products for “new TV” platforms like video on demand, DVR, mobile, and online video — has announced that it has raised $20 million in third-round funding. In addition, it has formed a partnership with NDS, a company which enables TV operators, content owners, and others to deliver content to new TV platforms.
BlackArrow’s Advanced Advertising System allows content providers to manage ad campaigns across multiple platforms, and also offers … Continue Reading
Seagate adds video streaming services to its media players
Seagate is announcing today that it is adding streaming video services from providers such as Netflix to its home media players.
Netflix streaming movies will now be part of the content available on Seagate’s FreeAgent Theater+ HD Media Players, which let people view computer files on their televisions. Seagate has also added access to YouTube, vTuner, and Mediafly services. Those services will now be able to reach a wider range of consumers. And customers of … Continue Reading
Meebo's XAuth could turn social sharing into a big business
For Web publishers, “share and share alike” is a nightmare, not a dream. Picking which social sharing services to show a user, from networks like Facebook and MySpace to discussion sites like Reddit and Digg to bookmarking services like Yahoo’s Delicious, is a maddening challenge.
As Facebook pushes to make its “Like” button a standard on the Internet, not just its own website, Meebo, a smaller startup based in Mountain View, Calif., is trying to … Continue Reading
Week in review: Android's disruptive potential, Twitter's new business model
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Could 2010 be the year Android unlocks your phone contract? — Analyst R. Scott Raynovich shares conclusions from his report “The Android Ecosystem”, arguing that Google’s mobile operating system could be even more disruptive than its wireless partners anticipate.
Philips ups ante on LEDs with 60-watt bulb replacement — Just a week after General … Continue Reading
EC Roundup: Warren Buffett, entrepreneur and learning when to pivot
Here’s the latest from Venture Beat’s Entrepreneur Corner.
Ask the attorney: How founder-friendly is FF stock? – As if Class F stock wasn’t confusing enough, now there’s Series FF stock. Attorney Scott Edward Walker runs down the particulars of these founders shares – which can let some entrepreneurs partially cash out of a venture-backed company even without a sale or IPO.
Startup lessons learned from Warren Buffett – Warren Buffett’s not only the world’s richest … Continue Reading
VentureSource report: Yep, the venture recovery is sluggish
Echoing a separate report released yesterday, Dow Jones VentureSource just published numbers showing that venture capital investment during the first three months of 2010 was sluggish compared to the end of last year.
In Q1, VCs invested $4.7 billion in 597 deals, according to VentureSource. If you look at both the number of investments and the amount invested throughout 2009, things seem to be recovering slowly after the financial crash at the end of 2008 … Continue Reading
Report: U.S. video game sales rise in March, God of War III leads sales charts
Things were looking up for the video game industry in March. Software sales grew 10 percent to $875.3 million from the same time a year ago, and industry revenues as a whole grew 6 percent to $1.52 billion, according to the market researcher NPD Group. Even accessory sales saw gains, up 11 percent to $206.8 million.
After a a year of slowing sales due to the recession, the news is a sign that things are … Continue Reading
Our iPad vs. MacBook keyboard showdown (video)
I’m a fan of the iPad, but when it comes to work and productivity, the device seems a bit underpowered.
In particular, the keyboard is a pain if you want to type more than a couple sentences — which could become a problem for Memeo, Roambi, and the many other developers hoping to bring meaningful business applications to the iPad. And that includes Apple itself, which is selling iWorks office applications for about $10 each.… Continue Reading
Apple sets its sights on event ticketing, patents reveal "Concert Ticket +"
Apple is looking to get into the concert and event ticketing business, according to recent patents discovered by Patently Apple. The patent describes an iTunes-based system and accompanying iPhone application called Concert Ticket +. Its aim is to simplify ticket purchasing and usage at a variety of events, including concerts, sporting events, amusement parks, trade conferences, and even weddings.
There’s no telling how this relates to the current concert ticket industry. Everybody hates Ticketmaster, the … Continue Reading
Not so Twitillating: Twitter’s un-revolutionary new ad platform
Mason Wiley is senior VP of marketing at digital ad platform operator Hydra.
True to prediction, Twitter announced that its new master plan for monetization is to copy Google create a search-based ad platform. While it includes a few laudable features, I share the view that Twitter has failed to capitalize on the essence of what makes its service so unique and so popular.
Delivering short bursts of information—or musings, rants, or what have you—in … Continue Reading
Parkzing reminds entrepreneurs (and everyone else) about their parking tickets
If I had to pick the most aggravating part of city life, it would probably be parking — finding a space for your car, moving it when required, and then dealing with the inevitable parking tickets when you slip up. Now an entrepreneur named Aren Sandersen has built a website called Parkzing to tackle part of the problem.
Sandersen is the co-founder of Apptizr, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup that helps users find mobile applications, … Continue Reading
EnerNOC and how demand response suddenly got sexy
The movement toward a cleaner, more efficient Smart Grid is off and running, with the Department of Energy allocating billions to the cause, and utilities revamping how they do business after decades of inertia. Now, the global effort is breathing new life into old concepts: Zigbee wireless communications, for one — but perhaps most importantly, demand response.
Here’s demand response in a nutshell: Utilities make deals with their rate payers, whether they be homeowners or … Continue Reading
Is Apple readying for a rematch with Microsoft in personal computing?
Pundits are declaring mobile the new PC. The number of mobile phones far outstrips the number of desktops. Mobile phones are available to people in the developing world who never had an opportunity to buy or even use a PC. With phones becoming smarter, there will be even less need for people to own PCs. Microsoft has dominated the PC-based world ever since it drove Apple close to extinction in the mid ’90s. But with … Continue Reading
Ideas for Twitter's new Annotations — from obvious to intriguing
The big game-changer (or alternately, the potential disaster) that came out of Twitter’s first big conference this week was Annotations. It’s a new way for developers to attach any kind of metadata to tweets. Twitter has long supported certain kinds of metadata like geolocation or what service the tweet was sent from, whether it was the web site or a Twitter client like Brizzly.
The new annotations open the possibility for making tweets and search … Continue Reading
Peer-to-peer lending site Prosper raises funding from Google CEO
Even with venture investing down in recent months, peer-to-peer lending companies don’t seem to have any problem securing funding. Prosper, one of the first peer-to-peer lending companies, today announced it a fourth round of funding for $14.5 million led by TomorrowVentures, the firm financed by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, and CompuCredit Holdings.
Just this week, competing peer-to-peer lending company Lending Club secured a third round of funding for $25 million. It has raised $53 … Continue Reading
